In a streaming media system, a computing device can process requests for one or more data assets such as a sequence of content fragments. The computing device can reference a fragment index or manifest to determine the span of data that constitutes the requested fragment. A user device (e.g., digital media player client) can receive and assemble the requested fragments and can render the fragments to a user.
As an example, devices such as content packagers are used to create the fragments and the fragment manifests based on the media stream. In a content network, multiple content packagers are typically employed. As such, alignment of each of the content packagers relative to the media stream and/or time is necessary to provide a seamless user experience, for example, at the user device. For example, if a content packager fails or communication between a content packager and a user device is interrupted, a redundant content packager must come online to continue the content service for the user device. Thus if alignment is not maintained properly, the packagers may digress in their operation. These and other shortcomings of the prior art are addressed by the present disclosure.